UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 39

This is an archive of past UESPWiki:Community Portal discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Kodlak Whitemane Combat Dialogue

There was recently an edit war on the SR:Kodlak Whitemane page over the addition of his unique voiced combat dialogue. The issue is whether it is worthwhile to have combat dialogue for him considering he does not naturally appear in combat in the game (thus, the only way to hear the dialogue for the player to attack Kodlak). Per Legoless's request, and as the user who originally attempted to add the dialogue has not created a topic despite numerous suggestions to, I have created this discussion and quick summary of the 'For' and 'Against' points.

Points For

The dialogue can be encountered in the game on any platform without the use of the console, mods, or cheats.
It is unique to Kodlak and was likely meant to be heard.
It provides more documentation of his appearance in the game.
There are no 'right' or 'wrong' for someone to play Skyrim.

Points Against

Kodlak is essential so there is no point in attacking him.
While there are no 'right' or 'wrong' ways to play Skyrim, we don't need to document every single possible thing someone could do.

My personal feelings are that the dialogue should be added. --AN|L (talk) 17:50, 11 August 2013 (GMT)

I think it's appropriate for the page, since you don't have to mod the game to hear the dialogue, and (I believe) that we try to fully document every aspect of the game somewhere on the wiki. If people don't like this dialogue on the NPC page, I still feel it should be documented somewhere. --Xyzzy ^Talk 18:08, 11 August 2013 (GMT)

Full support for adding it, along with any other unique lines of combat dialogue to Skyrim NPC pages. —Legoless (talk) 19:21, 11 August 2013 (GMT)

I agree with adding it as well... just because there's no "point" in attacking a character doesn't mean it wasn't meant to happen at some point, and therefore, doesn't mean that dialogue for such an incident isn't relevant to a page (which, if that was unfollowable, it is). --_¿Vulpa^? 20:05, 11 August 2013 (GMT)

Same opinion as Legoless, though I think it's important that this sort of dialogue is added with the same guidelines as all other dialogue on the wiki—in the proper format and style for dialogue, and taking into consideration the optimal overall page layout. Adding a bunch of lines with only line breaks in between only makes a page look sloppy, as does knowingly inserting broken and inconsistent tables. Provided those considerations are taken care of, the unique combat dialogue which can be encountered without mods is notable and should be documented in the Skyrim namespace, like we do with all other dialogue. The exception to this would be things such as "Aaaargh!" and other "dialogue" which is not notable for NPCs. — ABCface^◥ 20:10, 11 August 2013 (GMT)

Yes, I agree with adding it. When you mean things such as "Aarrgghh!" Or in other words, combat grunts and whatnot, like that are not on pages. I believe this is because no one would really want to look at combat grunts. Also, that combat dialogue for Dagoth Ur, Jeancey said it doesn't go on.

Points For

Dagoth Ur is a main character in Morrowind, and the main antagonist.
You cannot leave out UNIQUE dialogue on a main character.

About the Dagoth Ur dialogue. To be really honest about the edit war from my POV on it... I think Jeancey was being rather difficult with me on it, due to him saying in the edit summaries: "We do not add this dialogue to any page on the wiki." Well, it had dialogue for Mercer Frey's page, so either Jeancey had a secret reason, or, he just wanted to order me around on the wiki just for him having a better understanding of the wiki then me. Well, I am sure he will be inputting in this discussion about it soon, and we can get that sorted out. Guard of Dragons^{Speak To Me} 21:00, 11 August 2013 (GMT)

(←) I'm generally in support of the UESP being more comprehensive, but I'd like to know more about the scope, nature, and opportunity cost involved here. How much dialogue, across the site, are we talking about adding? How long will it take to add it all? How much interest will readers have in it? In other words, would we be generally improving the quality of the pages, or would this all just be so much filler readers will have to scroll through? Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 22:32, 11 August 2013 (GMT)

My reasoning was along the lines of ME. From what I can tell, none of the combat dialogue has anything to do with quests, lore, or anything else that would be useful for someone to know, besides simply wanting to know the exact text of a line they heard in game. Aside from that, I'm fairly certain that EVERY NPC with a unique voice type has unique combat dialogue, and every non-unique voicetype has unique dialogue. There are well over two dozen (if I am counting correctly) NPCs in Skyrim that have a unique voice type, without the DLCs involved. Mercer Frey's case was different, in my opinion, because you have to kill him during a quest, thus his combat dialogue may have comments about the quest. But a character that is never attacked or in combat during a quest would not provide any lore worthy material and simply has a lengthier version of "Arrrrghhh" as combat dialogue. I don't think we need to include this on the wiki. If the dialogue is during a quest or has noteworthy lore in it, then sure, we can add it, but otherwise it would be a direct copy from CSList, just a table of lines that someone would need to scroll past to get to the important things on the page. Jeancey (talk) 00:19, 12 August 2013 (GMT)

UESP has been following a completionist policy on dialogue since the OBNPCRP. Just because a certain line of dialogue is deemed "unimportant" and isn't usually heard doesn't detract from its value. If we were only including relevant, lore-heavy, quest-related dialogue on NPC pages, we wouldn't have these massive copypaste articles. Including irrelevant "filler" information after all the important stuff has always been a sufficient compromise in the past. —Legoless (talk) 00:31, 12 August 2013 (GMT)

We even include dialogue that wasn't said due to some issue or them using an alternative line. As such, I don't see any need for argument for lines that are unique, and available to be heard in-game. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 00:42, 12 August 2013 (GMT)

Your right. Everyone in Skyrim with a unique voicetype has unique combat dialogue. Apart from Dexion Evicus and Maven Black-Briar who don't, as far as I know. Guard of Dragons^{Speak To Me} 07:39, 12 August 2013 (GMT)

The Social Media Pages, and your helpful contributions

So as you likely already know, Dave and I embarked upon a quest to bring the UESP to social media earlier this year...and I have to say that, now that we are (mostly) established, things are going extremely well! To date, all of our pages are rather active, with our Facebook page having 721 followers, G+ 272, and Twitter 183, with our recent posts performing about 90-95% stronger than our initial ones. I think it is fair to say that we are moving out of the establishing phase and can now concentrate on content and audience - very exciting times!

However, right now the pages are run by me and occasionally The Silencer, which means it's only the two of us scouring the wiki and forums to think of things to create. I would like to implore everyone in the community to consider these pages a great way to reach out to an audience that faithfully turns to us as their number one source of TES-related information (even citing us before Bethesda and Zenimax in discussions), and to also share your knowledge of the series with them. And so, I come here asking you to join in on the fun!

Some things that I have noticed do extremely well and are well received include the following:

Answers to questions about lore-related information, with wiki links
User screenshots (including your wonderful images that do not become Features)
Featured Articles and Images (particularly for Oblivion and Morrowind)
TES-related community projects (record breaking, research, etc.)
Advertising (in and outside of UESP, which has potential)

Basically, we have now established a growing following, but the pages remain a great source of yet untapped potential. Again, I would like to stress that these pages are doing rather well. (Twitter, admittedly, needs some fresh ideas and work.) As a forum admin, I do not particularly know all of the areas on the wiki that could have use for this, but I imagine this would be a great outlet for introducing people to wiki markup and projects, blog posts, drawing attention to particular pages or discussions, or even having lore masters come forward for a FAQ.

I am looking for some fresh, great ideas about how we can help spread all of the wonderful information here on UESP, use our members' amazing resources and skills, and also help us get a leg up in a fan community that is flooded with podcasts, articles, and fan pages - many that get publicity in re-shares among the Bethesda and Zenimax media pages, and something we, too, can take advantage of. I would also like to try to establish a little group of volunteers who are willing to help collect content, share content, post content, and brainstorm about potential content. Judging from my discussions with several of you, everyone has fascinating ideas, and we can put them to good use! My explorations into other TES fansites has proven that we are the majority's number 1 go-to for information, and I thoroughly believe, and see, that these media pages are a great way to continue to extend our reach and get some helpful publicity. I am hoping that others agree!

So please consider lending a hand to this great project (or using it to get an extra hand with yours)! -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 20:57, 14 August 2013 (GMT)

I'm willing to help however I can, but I don't think I should necessarily help since I probably am among the least knowledgeable when it comes to social networking. If anyone else does, please volunteer. We have two users, with that including a user from the forum, working on this. This is easily the most ignored project in site history. I think a lot of these are making sure that the people running them currently are staying on top of it, but looking at the history of these pages makes it clear more volunteers for posting content is necessary. Anyone else have thoughts on this? This discussion died the last time it came up, and the time before that, but we definitely shouldn't let it go away a third time.

It would also be nice if we had a clear way to submit things for this besides talk pages or email. We should have a page set up for submitting suggestions for the social sites. It'll allow further discussion on what we want, and it'll give a much more clear place to bring ideas for those who may have them. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 03:40, 15 August 2013 (GMT)

I'm willing to work on finding interesting articles and tidbits on the wiki and otherwise work with social media. I may not be the best with ideas, but I can perhaps come up with some, in time. I'm not sure exactly how I could help other than finding stuff to share, but I'd like to.

Also, I was wondering if we wanted a tumblr to go along with these, too? It's the social site I use most at the moment, and I've got a few ideas that could be explored there, if that's wanted. Vely^►t►e 03:59, 15 August 2013 (GMT)

I think it'd make most sense to have suggestions for it sent to the social media pages themselves. They all have ways of communicating with the admins of pages and the only people who would care about what to post on social media sites are the people who are on the sites. Thus it would make sense to post suggestions there.--Catmaniac66 (talk) 04:04, 15 August 2013 (GMT)

I think having a space to submit suggestions would be great, AKB.

Catmaniac, we did ask the SMP readers what they'd like to see, but it really has to do with content from the wiki. Based on the comments I get on those sites, most of our readers are actually not registered users of the community but fans of UESP. If you want to post suggestions there, you could, but I think it would get messy. What you want to take in on the SMPs is feedback from your audience and questions from them; if you start cluttering pages with ideas from the creators/company/presence of that page, you will likely, and unintentionally, give off the image of not really having it together. It's helpful to think of the SMPs as our face to the world outside of the UESP community, so we want to put our best (and organized) foot forward. Plus, you don't have to read the SMPs, but you should definitely care about what's on them - it's representing all of us, after all!

Vely, tumblr is definitely a unique medium that's very active in terms of media, so that could be a potential direction to go in, if we had the content. How would you propose that sort of page would work? I'm very interested! --Avron the S'wit (talk) 13:57, 15 August 2013 (GMT)

tumblr is very visuals-based, so most posts would have images. Facebook already allows for a single image + caption, so there could be some posts like that too. I'd think some other posts could be small image collections, while others could feature articles, showing images from an article while summarizing it or providing a shortened version of the article. In addition, tumblr allows followers to submit posts to the page, which can then be approved/denied by a blog admin, so we could ask for followers to submit their own images of their favorite places, NPCs, etc. to the blog if we wanted to add that angle, but that would probably have to wait a while to figure out what we'd want with the blog. And it's very question-friendly, too. We could reblog content from the official ESO tumblr whenever they end up posting stuff again.

I also believe that a few wikians are going to go to the next PAX event, so while a bunch of images of cool stuff would be unnecessary on the wiki and an article may go unnoticed, one or two image-filled posts on tumblr would work well, and I think reviews of the demo would be more noticed there. Vely^►t►e 20:08, 15 August 2013 (GMT)

That's a super idea! If Dave was okay with going into that medium, and others it might be worth it, then do you think that's a project you could help with? People have also asked about doing a "Who's Who Around UESP," as they're curious about who their editors are. I don't think everyone wants to throw up the veil behind their username, but perhaps conducting some quick interviews to share would be interesting? I know Dave already agreed to one. --Avron the S'wit (talk) 14:27, 17 August 2013 (GMT)

(←) I would be down for an interview, and I would definitely be fine helping out with a tumblr. Vely^►t►e 15:59, 17 August 2013 (GMT)

I would be willing to be interviewed as well. --AN|L (talk) 17:41, 17 August 2013 (GMT)

I would love to be interviewed. :> --Nocte|Chat|Look 18:25, 17 August 2013 (GMT)

Everyone wants to be famous, huh? (Hah, hah!) You guys can make a note on my talk page to let me know so I don't forget, and that'd be great. Otherwise, if you can think of any useful content, please, please remember to keep our pages in mind. People love our posts and we have a whole site to cherry pick from - let's make it meaningful! Even volunteering to answer questions on a character or quest or game you're very familiar with in a Q&A would be really fun!

Also, if someone with good wiki tech skills is available to help answer user questions (i.e., about our wiki search not working), that would be really useful as well. --Avron the S'wit (talk) 12:55, 22 August 2013 (GMT)

I'm interested in being interviewed, i have ran quite a few social networking pages, and would love to help out with elder scrolls stuff! i'm also making another youtube channel aside from my main to post all tes stuff, weekly TESO news and updates, Lore segments, all tes gameplay, and mod reviews. im tough to contact on here as i work alot so if you'd like to chat my email is matt@spinnakersound.com :) — Unsigned comment by Foxxsnsuch (talk • contribs) at 20:00 on 7 September 2013‎

Sofie NOT MOVING

Discussion moved to Skyrim_talk:Sofie#Sofie Not Moving

Morrowind quests page

Moved from User talk:!!Venotar!!

This page http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Quests has a heading for towns. It does not include hyperlinks to all the towns. It is missing Dagon Fel, Khuul, Maar Gan, Molag Mar, Tel Aruhn, Tel Fyr, Tel Mora, Tel Vos, and Vos.
From the above link, for the Towns that are there, some of the links take you to the quests page for that town, others take you to the page for that town.
On the places page, Ebonheart is listed as a fort while Ghostgate is listed as a Landmark where everywhere else they are listed as towns.

I don't know if these are big issues, or if maybe they exist as current for a particular reason, but I just wanted to let you know. Thanks! — Unsigned comment by 184.74.4.42 (talk) at 17:34 on 3 September 2013

Bruma Investigator Guard

He should have an individual page. He has a unique name, not a generic guard name. e.g. Bruma Guard. Guard of Dragons^{Speak To Me} 17:21, 5 September 2013 (GMT)

I'm not sure I agree. He only appears in one quest, and he's only a minor part of that one. There's nothing about his character that differs enough from your rank and file Bruma guardsman to justify giving him his own page. I'm not even sure there's enough that could be said about him to fill a subsection of the page he's on right now. He may have a different name, but functionally, he's a Bruma Guard, so anything we could say about him would be redundant. ThuumofReason (talk) 17:46, 5 September 2013 (GMT)

I think his already existing blurb on the guard page is enough for him already. After all, the only difference between him and other Bruma Guards is pretty much just his name and dialogue which could probably be apart of the A Brotherhood Betrayed page if it is even noteworthy. •WoahBro^►talk 17:52, 5 September 2013 (GMT)

Agreed. ThuumofReason (talk) 18:10, 5 September 2013 (GMT)

Also agreed. This issue has been brought up before, and it's no different now. --AN|L (talk) 18:26, 5 September 2013 (GMT)

He should have a seperate page. He is different from generic NPCs because his name is UNIQUE and not found on ANY other NPC in the game. Guard of Dragons^{Speak To Me} 20:37, 5 September 2013 (GMT)

Despite being unique, it is still generic. —Legoless (talk) 21:12, 5 September 2013 (GMT)

- (←) Also Dragon Guard, we have had the conversation before. Twice you have tried to make a page for something just like this (The Pelagia Farm Giant and the Morrowind Boat Guard), and twice you have been told that these sorts of pages do not need to be created.--AN|L (talk) 21:14, 5 September 2013 (GMT)

As a formality, I'd like to point out that, as of this post, the vote is 4 to 1 against a separate page, so consensus seems to be against inclusion. Still. ThuumofReason (talk) 21:53, 5 September 2013 (GMT)

If the only differences between him and the other Bruma guards are his name, ID, and a few lines of dialogue, that doesn't sound like enough difference to warrant a separate article for him. --Xyzzy ^Talk 22:34, 5 September 2013 (GMT)

NOT generic: He has a unique schedule. Unique dialogue. And a unique name. That's three strikes in my book. Guard of Dragons^{Speak To Me} 07:23, 6 September 2013 (GMT)

Instead of repeating the same points over and over again, try a different angle. Repeating yourself only stonewalls a discussion, it doesn't serve to conclude it. On topic, then: I do not feel that this warrants a separate page. There's not enough about the guard that IS unique to flush out a full article. And, quite simply, aside from the name and a couple of dialogue lines, there's nothing different. Sorry. --Nocte|Chat|Look 09:19, 6 September 2013 (GMT)

Next thing you're saying every single guard needs a page because they have their own schedules and beds and whatnot ~ Dwarfmp (talk) 12:37, 6 September 2013 (GMT)

A schedule of standing around in a house 24/7 until the related quest is finished and then disappearing from the game is not noteworthy on a separate page, sorry, it appears like this discussion is going nowhere anytime soon. •WoahBro^►talk 13:44, 6 September 2013 (GMT)

(←) Shall we see what happens, okay? I might work on it in a sandbox and you might think it's a good page on The Bruma Investigator Guard. Guard of Dragons^{Speak To Me} 12:19, 7 September 2013 (GMT)

This NPC is just too minor to deserve a page. Anything he has to say is more relevant on a quest page than an NPC page. As everyone seems to be in agreement with this, I don't see the need to try to create it with a sandbox. Treat this conversation as a deletion review for the proposed article. If it were one, it would clearly be going away. As such, further efforts toward this are unnecessary, and would be entirely unproductive. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 14:24, 7 September 2013 (GMT)

When / and that's if I make his page in a sandbox, you will see for yourself. Guard of Dragons^{Speak To Me} 14:27, 7 September 2013 (GMT)

I have worked on hundreds of NPC articles. I know that it will not work. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 14:30, 7 September 2013 (GMT)

I've started working on it in a sandbox. Guard of Dragons^{Speak To Me} 15:08, 7 September 2013 (GMT)

You have the right to do pretty much what you want with your sandbox, but realize that you are likely wasting your time. It's very clear that consensus is against having a separate article for this guy, as the editors that responded here are very likely going to also vote against implementing your article when you finish it. --Xyzzy ^Talk 16:20, 7 September 2013 (GMT)

I am NOT wasting my time on it. When the article is finished, you (and others) will think it's a good article. I am 90% sure of it. Guard of Dragons^{Speak To Me} 16:25, 7 September 2013 (GMT)

It would be better integrated into another article, similar to Oblivion:Bodyguard. —Legoless (talk) 21:46, 7 September 2013 (GMT)

It would be better not being written. It's only going to be deleted, we've told you that, but since you insist on pushing this, we'll insist on seeing it towards its natural and inevitable conclusion. ThuumofReason (talk) 11:21, 8 September 2013 (GMT)

Guys, this is ridiculous. He should have a page because he does have unique dialogue. But the main reason I want an individual NPC page for him is because he has a UNIQUE name. Because he is a non-generic NPCs with unique name he MUST have a individual NPC page. Guard of Dragons^{Speak To Me} 18:26, 12 September 2013 (GMT)

(←) Please consider the fact that every editor here, which includes three different administrators, is in disagreement with you. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 18:41, 12 September 2013 (GMT)

Dragon Guard: Rather than continuing to debate the matter, I'd suggest that you go ahead and flesh out your sandbox version of the page you're proposing. At least then, we'll have a concrete page to look at and debate the merits of. I tend to agree with the others here, but we can't see what's in your head. If it works out, it wouldn't be the first time someone's come up with something everyone else thought was unwanted. Even if it doesn't work out as a full page, perhaps there'll be enough material there to use in a section on the City Guard page, or Bodyguard as Legoless suggested. We won't know until we see it completed. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 19:45, 12 September 2013 (GMT)

I just need the image in my sandbox and a few tweakings. Guard of Dragons^{Speak To Me} 07:21, 13 September 2013 (GMT)

A page for Daedric magic?

I've been playing through Oblivion again, and frequent mentions of Daedric magic have got me wondering about the details of it. When I searched on here, though, there didn't seem to be any page or section of a page about it, so I propose the creation of [[Lore:Daedric magic]] to consolidate what's known. Not 100% certain this is the right place for this, though. Xolroc (talk) 18:54, 22 September 2013 (GMT)

There's the problem: We simply don't know anything about Daedric magic other than Martin Septim was involved in it. We simply don't have the references from the games to be able to compose a page on the subject. •WoahBro^►talk 19:14, 22 September 2013 (GMT)

Not having enough information on it isn't really a reason not to create a lore page, just take a look at Lore:Eton Nir, which is one sentence. And there's one more reference to daedric magic in Lore:Skakmat. But I don't know how we would describe what daedric magic is and it might just confuse people. --AN|L (talk) 20:36, 22 September 2013 (GMT)

(edit conflict) There's enough info about it to make a decent page. It seems to involve sigils, dangerous rituals and the binding of Daedric souls. Maybe talk about Oblivion Gates and Ahzidal's madness. A comparable page would be Lore:Shadow Magic. Also, 'magic' should be capitalised in the title if it does get created. —Legoless (talk) 20:39, 22 September 2013 (GMT)

We know also that it's how Oblivion Gates work (obviously) and that most if not all of the Daedric artifacts are probably related in some way to it. I believe the ritual for making Black Soul Gems may also be Daedric, but I don't have any proof for that other than a hunch and a semi-recalled association with a Daedra. There may also be some overlap with Conjuration, since it involves summoning lesser daedra. I could ramble further about this but I think it'd be best to find a dedicated place for this discussion; can one create a talk page before the actual page has been created? Xolroc (talk) 20:45, 22 September 2013 (GMT)

You can create a talk page before the actual page, but then it would have to be deleted if we didn't make the actual page. Best to just discuss it here. --AN|L (talk) 20:47, 22 September 2013 (GMT)

If you say so. I'd just thought it'd be best not to clutter up this page. Xolroc (talk) 20:53, 22 September 2013 (GMT)

Black Soul Gems invoke the Necromancer's Moon. Related more to Lorkhan than the Daedra. —Legoless (talk) 21:00, 22 September 2013 (GMT)

(←) There is some source material inside the Shivering Isles, particularly in the dialogue of Haskill and Dyus, that might be useful as well. The lore on black soul gems is contradictory, there's information that they're tied to the Soul Cairn which is Daedric. --Morrolan (talk) 21:17, 22 September 2013 (GMT)

Dungeon walkthroughs

I've seen a lot of activity on dungeon articles, specifically in the walkthrough sections. It seems like a lot of this activity involves listing every single enemy or non-unique item rather than actually providing instructions for how to get through the dungeon. I started a discussion here, in which I inquired whether it was necessary to list every single potion or low-level weapon that appears in the dungeon, but it occurs to me that this discussion applies to all dungeon walkthroughs. The policy on how to write articles for dungeons seems like it's still in development, but hasn't been touched for a while.

What does the community think? Should every single item and enemy be listed, or only the major/unique ones? ThuumofReason (talk) 18:48, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

The most useful dungeon walkthroughs I've seen on this site are mostly the ones in the Oblivion namespace, which consist of maps with letters on them that indicate where traps, enemies, controls etc. are. They give a lot of detail without needing a lot of text. A lot of the ones in the Skyrim namespace don't have maps, and so you have a lot of text that's trying to specify where the enemies are. It would be better to try and comprehensively map them; maybe a project for someone with the CK? --Morrolan (talk) 19:01, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

I can nab maps if necessary, if given a list, but I don't know how to mark objects on the maps with wiki markup.

Each generic enemy should be at least mentioned, but not needing detail: "In the next room are a few hagravens", or "along the left wall is a frostbite spider". Generic items can't really jump out and hurt you. For example, I probably did quite a bit of overkill on Addvar's House when listing things. It should be fine to say "there's a meal on the table, a few hanging animals and ingredients, and a storage area containing meats and many cheese wheels". The cabbage in a pot is irrelevant, as would be a few iron arrows or an iron axe lying about in a dungeon, unless the area is otherwise sparse.

If we wanted to list every single NPC and item, we could do so in a showhide table. However, other than leveled items and notable items/NPCs, I think everything else has room to be generic; otherwise it all just gets cluttered. I don't feel too strongly though. Vely^►t►e 19:12, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

The maps I'm talking about don't use wiki markup, they're just images. Oblivion:Miscarcand (place) is an example. --Morrolan (talk) 19:17, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

This topic is highly subjective, and to take the subjectiveness out of it as much as possible when writing for a wiki you must include all items. This is going too far though, as many many items can be found, so general clutter (pots and pans, buckets etc.) are not included, however, everything that is potentially useful must be included, and that means food, potions, enemies, dead bodies, weapons, armor, etc. There can be no other way when writing a wiki, because even disregarding clutter is unwikilike. Being the writer of many of the dungeon walkthroughs in question I won't be changing my writing style, because I'm documenting the game, not making a walkthrough, which is also why I abhor using the header "walkthrough" on place pages too. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 19:23, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

If you want maps with traps, generic enemies, named/boss enemies, and leveled/named/quest items, I would not mind working on maps with color-coded dots (and uploading basic maps for others to work on). However, that may be a separate conversation from this one. Vely^►t►e 19:40, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

(←) It is 100% certain that all dungeon articles for Skyrim will have to be consistent sooner or later – what we need is a project and some very thorough guidelines. The Oblivion dungeons were not just written overnight, but was a result of months and months of discussion, testing, uploading maps, uploading overlays, putting them together, extracting all the data from the CS to match the overlays – you get the picture, otherwise check out what the OPRP guidelines used to look like here. In short, it takes an awful lot of hard work – both with the CK and in-game. --Krusty (talk) 19:49, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

Oh, and doing Skyrim dungeons with an approach similar to the Oblivion articles was proved when SerCenKing launched this page. In my opinion, that is a prime example of good dungeon layout. Add a map with some dots/letters and make the necessary additions to the enemies and treasure sections, and the page is spot-on. --Krusty (talk) 20:23, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

I just wanted to throw in my opinion, which is that I agree with Silencer; places should not get "walkthroughs". Walkthroughs are for quests. Places should get a zonal breakdown of what's there, and what the place is for. If and when it's helpful, there can be a brief guide of how to get through each zone, like on OB:Nenyond Twyll. I agree that Bruca's Leap Redoubt one has a good layout. --Enodoc (talk) 20:48, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

I also agree with Enodoc and Silencer. On place pages, we should document everything that could be considered potentially useful. This is pretty much what I think we decided back when we had the whole quest/place debate. About the only thing I slightly disagree with Silencer on is food, which is generally useless after the first level or two, but given that some people deliberately don't level, or manage to get way more done without levelling than I ever do, I can see the argument for including it. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 21:27, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

I agree with Silencer on this. Full documentation of everything except clutter in place articles, limited notation of valuable or unique items in quest articles. --Xyzzy ^Talk 21:53, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

That sounds reasonable. The question, then, is how we make an inclusive list of items and enemies without making the article seem cluttered or disorganized. I think the non-clutter items should be listed in a separate section from the walkthrough, possibly in a showhide table as Vely suggested. This would allow us to document all the useful things while also making the walkthroughs (if we are to have them - Silencer and Enodoc make great points on the merits of zonal breakdowns over detailed walkthroughs) more coherent. I also agree with Vely that it would be a good idea to condense mentions of individual enemies into groups. We obviously need to mention them, but they should be mentioned in groups when possible. ThuumofReason (talk) 23:41, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

I'm not real fond of show/hide info. Is it really necessary to do this? Can somebody give an example article where listing useful items made it too long or cluttered? The only time I thought an article approached this was Skyrim:Understone Keep, and that was because of the extremely detailed descriptions of furnishings. Even in that case, it still wasn't enough for me to want to scale it back. --Xyzzy ^Talk 23:59, 3 October 2013 (GMT)

The showhide isn't the important part, that was just a suggestion. The important part is getting the content of the page organized into relevant sections. Maybe we should focus on the walkthrough issue. Labeling it as a "walkthrough" makes it seem like the purpose is to guide someone through the dungeon step by step, and listing all the treasure individually disrupts the flow. Take the walkthrough in the Ustengrav article; for the section on zone 1, the descriptions of loot take up at least half the section, and the rest of that section is rather vague in its sparse instructions on how to get through the zone. Compare that to the section on zone 2, which is much longer and more detailed. The content of the two sections is so radically different that it's like they're two separate articles. The Bruca's Leap Redoubt article, by comparison, is concise and to-the-point, and it lists the enemies and loot in an easy-to-read table format. I think that article should be our reference point for dungeon articles going forward. ThuumofReason (talk) 00:53, 4 October 2013 (GMT)

(←) They do seem rather different. Personally, I think the first zone's description is fine. The description of available items doesn't detract from the article, IMO. The walkthrough for Ustengrav Depths is quite a lot longer, but that zone is somewhat more complex. In addition, there is quite a bit of extraneous description of furnishings, combat strategies, et cetera that is bulking up the section needlessly. I would prefer to see our place articles resemble zone 1 rather than zone 2. --Xyzzy ^Talk 03:30, 4 October 2013 (GMT)

I agree. ThuumofReason (talk) 12:26, 4 October 2013 (GMT)

I think we should do both the "walkthrough" and the "documentation" thing, but not merged with each other. If a user comes in search of how to progress the dungeon, he'll not want to know each apple the ancient nords have left behind. But documentation is a job of a wiki, so that needs to be included as well. I'd favor either a showhide-table or a map.

Speaking of which, I have worked on a map template simmilar to the perk tree template, maybe it'll be usefull... -- SarthesArai ^Talk 13:20, 4 October 2013 (GMT)

Personally, I would support more of the "walkthrough" approach that was implemented on the various Oblivion dungeon articles by the OPRP project standards. The Skyrim article that Krusty pointed to that used this style seemed to work quite well. While I can see that the argument for full documentation of places may be more reasonable with Skyrim dungeons, particularly since many dungeons in Skyrim are much more detailed as opposed to some of the mundane caves in Oblivion, I do not think this is necessary for this to be included in the prose of the walkthrough of the article. The goal of more or less any dungeon, be it random exploration or quest-related dungeon delving, is typically to reach the end of the area and fight the boss foe there and claim the treasure/reward. Thus, a walkthrough that compliments this approach seems the most practical as it gets readers to this end goal while also noting other items/treasures that are important and tips for fighting enemies, avoiding traps, and solving puzzles. Looking at the Oblivion articles, a walkthrough that focuses on an annotated map which marks all the important parts of a dungeon can provide readers with all the given information they would want for a given dungeon.

This being said, it is not like the full documentation of a dungeon cannot be done in a more walkthrough oriented article. Most Oblivion dungeon articles document the majority of items that are in a given dungeon. Taking an example Oblivion article such as Fathis Aren's Tower; everything that is in the dungeon's zones is listed in sections such as "Occupants", "Treasure", etc. The reason this example was picked was because it also used letters such as E, F, and H on the annotated map to denote where a selection of alchemy ingredients are located. What these ingredients are is then fully listed in the "Treasure" section. This then allowed the walkthrough to just make mention of these letters, rather than listing every single ingredient in the prose of the article. Overall, I personally believe this approach allows the article to have better flow and not be weighed down by incredibly detailed descriptions while still having fairly full documentation. I'm not suggesting that this exact approach needs to be used, but something similar could work quite well, perhaps the showhide approach that has been suggested by others. As stated previously, Skyrim's dungeons may demand a more detailed documentation since they are more detailed than Oblivion's, but I still do not think it is necessary to use the extremely detailed approach that is used in house articles. House areas do not contain nearly as many containers, shelves, etc. as dungeons which can lead to walkthroughts that will basically lose the "walkthrough" aspect because the article will mainly contain descriptions of rooms within a place. Oblivion's dungeon articles managed quite nicely without listing how many sacks containing food or other generic ingredients can be found on a table in some bandit's camp within a cave for example.

So in the end, it very much comes down to whether we want Skyrim dungeon articles to be fully documented such as house pages are or to be more of the walkthrough oriented approach of the OPRP. This stems down to whether we want to provide readers with a description or a walkthrough of a given dungeon.Since many dungeons are quite detailed and contain enough interesting features for more of a documenting approach to work quite well, I personally would not have a problem with this. Many of our great editors have already created place articles as such that are very interesting reads in their own right. However, I personally believe that the more walkthrough oriented approach can provide shorter articles that are more in line with the goals of most readers along with still providing a fairly strong documentation of the place. With the aid of an annotated map, the walkthrough oriented approach can still document places quite well without weighing down the article with heavily detailed descriptions. Forfeit (talk) 22:03, 4 October 2013 (GMT)

Is there a list of "pages that really need improvement"?

I came across this http://uesp.net/wiki/Tes3Mod:Tamriel_Rebuilt/Gilnyth_Ancestral_Tomb and thought at first that it had been vandalized, but no, it's always been like that. I thought I'd add it to some sort of super-stub list if there is one. Xolroc (talk) 22:33, 20 October 2013 (GMT)

Seems pretty unnecessary. A lot of TR pages are mostly blank, just look here. —Legoless (talk) 22:44, 20 October 2013 (GMT)

^ What Legoless said. Just look at the "Stubs" categories to see what pages need to be expanded. Also, I expanded the description on Gilnyth Ancestral Tomb a bit. If I can find it in-game, I may do a lot more. Then again, I should really do any place that isn't already filled out that I encounter... •WoahBro^►talk 23:53, 20 October 2013 (GMT)

Items Overhaul?

One of the biggest suggestions we got when we did a user poll was to provide more in-depth coverage for items, similar to how we already do for leveled items and artifacts. Or to clarify, a page like this would go to being like this. I am personally in support for this initiative for a few reasons.

For one, it allows for more thorough documentation of the items in questions, for both our own sake and for our users. When a user types in Ogmund's Amulet of Talos, they would surely prefer to have a small but content complete article detailing what it's for, where you get it, its uses, that sort of thing. Currently, they would instead see this table. I am not criticizing this table, I know so much work work went into getting this table to be so nice, but I also want to point out that there is an almost universal preference between this version of Skyrim:Leveled Items and this version of the same page. It simply looks nicer this way, and is more informative without becoming bloated the way a table would.

The second reason I want to see this done is that a lot of the items we currently don't have proper articles for are extremely interesting. As Skyrim is the focus on my efforts here (at least for the moment), I just want to point out the sheer overhaul that was given to items for the game. There are simply a ton of interesting looking ones with fascinating uses and back stories. By not giving them their own pages, we simply don't give them as much coverage. Not only do I think we need articles for these items for other reasons that will be gone over here, but I want to give them articles. I want to show off how cool looking the dragon claws are, I want to write information about the ornate gilding on General Tullius' Armor, I want to talk about some of my favorite items that I currently cannot due to them not being a leveled item or artifact. Which leads into my next reason for bringing this up...

Currently, we tend to only give articles to items that are either artifacts, or leveled. Why is this? I can understand the significance of artifacts, but there is not that much interesting about a lot of leveled items. Giving them articles simply because they can have different stats seems odd, when we only have tables for so many unique items. Leveled items are best summarized in tables, so why give them an article and table? Surely it would be easier to just give the unique item its own article, as you wouldn't even need a table to go with it? This odd tendency on this site doesn't seem to be all that reason based, so I think it would be for the best to correct it for the quality of the site as a whole.

As I just mentioned site quality, I want to mention the implications this would have for the value of our own site. I don't think it's a controversial opinion to say that the UESP is one of the most prestigious fan sites out there. Increasing the amount of coverage we do for the games can only help this reputation. Users have noticed that we don't give items much more than a brief sentence or two at the most, as it is, and their reactions have not been positive. By changing this standing behavior, we'll not only convince more fans of the obvious quality of the UESP, but also legitimately improve it.

So there you have it: increased documentation capability, personal interest in doing this, the correction of the current odd system we have for item coverage, the fulfillment of reader wishes, and the increase to site prestige are just a few of the reasons we should do this. As I am want to partake in this project, I intend to try working on one of the pages I'm interested in overhauling this weekend. So if there is any objections, please let me hear them now so I can take them into consideration before it would cut into my time to do this.

And for the record, I still am unconvinced that we need articles for all items. That might be just too much. For example, there isn't much you can do for an article that would be about a key you use a single time. While this argument can apply to some of the items we currently don't go over in detail, the same is true for some of the items we already do give more coverage. This is not a suggestion that we give an article for, say, Silus's Museum Key. I doubt anyone would even read it, let alone care about it if they did. Many more would care for the unique items we don't cover, as suggested by their previous comments about this. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 20:26, 30 October 2013 (GMT)

This has my full support, and I'd certainly help with it.

Your links to the leveled items list both link to the same version, by the way. Xolroc (talk) 20:29, 30 October 2013 (GMT)

Thanks for pointing that out, fixed it. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 20:33, 30 October 2013 (GMT)

Supported as well. --AN|L (talk) 20:35, 30 October 2013 (GMT)

I supported this when we discussed it in IRC a while back, and still support it now. I would love to help out with the project as well. — ABCface^◥ 20:44, 30 October 2013 (GMT)

My opinions about this are mixed. On the one hand, it's true that the purpose of the UESP is to document knowledge about the Elder Scrolls games, and some of the unique items deserve more in-depth descriptions than they're being given at the moment (the unique armor sets with enchantments in particular are something I would like to see full articles on). However, I feel that implementation of a project like this would have some serious implications for wiki policy, and could lead to some very messy disputes in the future if not handled properly.

While I do agree that a lot of unique items deserve more space than they're being given, I'm worried that there's not enough to say about some of them to fill even a short page. Take the Blade of Sacrifice, for example. It looks like an ebony dagger, its stats are almost identical, and when it comes right down to it, it has no real use. You don't need to use it to kill the sacrifice for Boethiah's quest, any weapon will do. It's given next to no mention after its introduction, and the only significant difference it has from a normal ebony dagger is that it can't be enchanted. There's not enough we can say about this particular item to justify giving it its own page. Similarly, there's pretty much nothing else to say about Angi's Bow; it's just a hunting bow with a fancy name. So where do we draw the line? Which items need to be discussed in greater detail, and which ones are fine as they are? We would need to have clear, agreed-upon guidelines in place from the beginning to determine which items to expand on and which ones should stay the same.

My primary concern is that implementing a project like this would necessarily result in a re-evaluation of how we handle similar questions. We all agreed a few weeks ago that the Bruma Investigator Guard didn't deserve a separate page, because he was so similar to other Bruma Guards that there wasn't enough information to justify giving him a separate article. If this project goes into effect, that rationale pretty much goes out the window, not just for the Investigator, but for every time we don't want a separate article. People will point to this project, saying "We gave these things separate articles!" The implications of this project could also be used to justify giving separate articles to each individual instance of a radiant quest (like Skyrim:Dungeon Delving (Caves)), and while I would actually be totally fine with that, it would mean a lot more work on all of our parts.

My personal belief is that it would be more useful to give separate articles to unique items on a case-to-case basis. We determine how much we can say about it, how much space we need, and how it's different enough from other similar items to justify a separate article. I think that with clearly stated guidelines and careful handling, this project can work. But we should all have a clear understanding beforehand on how to go about doing it and how much work we're willing to do, not just for the work that goes into the project, but for the work that comes out of it. ThuumofReason (talk) 22:26, 30 October 2013 (GMT)

I believe your example is a bit extreme slippery slope scenario. There is a very clear line to be drawn, when the item is entirely generic or completely unworthy of further notation. And our decision on how to handle items, an area of the site that I find to be currently lacking in content to a great degree, does not effect our decisions with things like NPCs, which are much more content complete. If the item is without any kind of character besides it existing, then it does not need a page. That's the most obvious line to draw. As for your claim that it will be hard to write said articles, I disagree again. It's not hard writing an article when you have a clear subject. Describing the item, what effect it has, when you get it, its significance to the gameworld, that's all you'd even really need to turn what we have into a full-fledged page on its own.

A case-by-case basis will simply be too messy, and too lengthy. Every editor who would be involved with this process clearly already has the ability to make sound enough judgements without a formal discussion on whether one of dozens of new pages needs to be made. Maybe it's weird to throw caution to the wind, but it seems to be a bit much to do it as formally as possible. All that will get us is death by bureaucratic processes. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 02:38, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

I've always disliked overuse of tables. While I'm not sure where the line should be drawn when deciding which items deserve a page, I support the general idea. Small articles aren't a problem, despite the site's odd precedent for thinking so. Large globular lists of confusing information are, however. We've brought Skyrim up to a certain standard, and this might be a good direction for the namespace's continued expansion. Seeing this done with Oblivion and Morrowind would also be interesting. —Legoless (talk) 02:45, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

(←) True, that is a worst-case scenario, but I feel it's still something worth keeping in mind. Also, I never made any claims about the difficulty of writing any articles, just that we would need some clear guidelines. If we have agreed-upon guidelines, we don't need to judge each item individually, but ultimately we do need some kind of guidelines, because even though it may seem clear-cut to us, different people have different ideas of how things should work, and it's in those cases that clear guidelines are useful. Again, I think this is a good idea, but a bit of planning and groundwork now will save us a few lengthy discussions in the future. That's all I'm saying. ThuumofReason (talk) 03:00, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

I fully support this idea. I dislike the way these tables start to bloat as editors try to add legitimate info to item descriptions, and also see no reason to oppose short articles for items just because they don't have long back stories. --Xyzzy ^Talk 03:02, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

While I understand your point Thuum, I think the guidelines might generate more naturally should we just go ahead. However, for the sake of convincing you of my reasoning, here is what I consider to be some logical ones, with some clear leeway depending on the need:

The item is not generic. A hunting bow isn't of note, but Agni's Bow would be.

It has some kind of story or relevance tied to it. A key is not noteworthy, as any other key could take its place. The guild master's armor for the thieves guild is noteworthy as it is a symbol of the position.

The item should have a unique design. A bit more clearly loose with this one, but this forces out the tons of generic enchanted weapons and armor from the list of items deserving attention.

Does this help you see what I'm going for here? --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 03:10, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

Yeah. I get what's going on, and it sounds like we have (more or less) similar ideas for guidelines, I just feel like they should be spelled out. But if everyone else agrees that that's not immediately necessary, I'll support the group decision. ThuumofReason (talk) 03:18, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

Does anyone else have anything to say? I intend to start this sometime today or tomorrow otherwise. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 18:40, 1 November 2013 (GMT)

Would it be worth retaining the current table page while creating new pages? I like the current tables because they're easy to glance at and browse/compare items without opening tens of pages, but I also like the idea of new pages for unique items (and support the idea regardless of what happens to the current page). Vely^►t►e 19:48, 1 November 2013 (GMT)

(←) There really wouldn't be anywhere to put them, as with the Artifact and Leveled Items pages. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 23:37, 1 November 2013 (GMT)

How about having the tables page and the items titles themselves be linked to the items' individual pages? I think something like this is done with the Morrowind items, I can't remember for sure and I'm too lazy to check right now.•WoahBro^►talk 01:45, 2 November 2013 (GMT)

I've never seen that in Morrowind item pages. Either way, I don't think that the comparison is even all that important. The items in questions aren't part of the same set or anything like that, the only thing that associates them is that "The can be used as armor" or "They are a weapon". As such, I don't see any need to keep the table. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 02:03, 2 November 2013 (GMT)

For the record, I'm going to start these now based on the feedback here. I've been a bit more occupied than I intended, so it might take longer than previously assumed. I might actually have to take up your offers to help :-) --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 16:53, 3 November 2013 (GMT)

SRNRP

Does anyone think it is a good idea to have a Skyrim NPC Redesign project, similar to the Oblivion NPC Resesign Project? DG^{Any Questions?} 16:19, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

Honestly, I do not think that it would be all that necessary or helpful. There are still plenty of NPC pages that are stubs, which shows that they still need information added to them (just as a project tag would). And the project really would be somewhat redundant, given all of the information already listed on the NPC Layout Guide about what type of information should be on an NPC page. The project guidelines would simply repeat the majority of what is already on this page, if not entirely. These guidelines were not around back when the Oblivion NPC Redesign Project started (at least, to the best of my knowledge) which is why it was more necessary. It is still useful as well, since all the NPC pages are no longer marked as stubs but many are still missing relevant information, which the project tag keeps track of. So, in my opinion, a Skyrim NPC project probably would not be all that useful since the stubs show that content needs to be added and the layout page describes how to add said content. Forfeit (talk) 16:45, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

I'm pretty sure I've thought about this very idea before. In my opinion, Forfeit makes some very, very good points. I'm not sure what else I can say on the topic except Forfeit put the thought to rest in my mind. •WoahBro^►talk 16:58, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

Agreed. We can talk about redesigns once we finish the first designs. ThuumofReason (talk) 21:18, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

An NPC project for Skyrim is problematic on several levels, mainly because it is too late to start a project now. We have hundreds of ‘finished’ NPC pages in SR namespace, but we lack the control the OBNPCRP provided, specifically the checking stage. If you look at Captain Aldis, the stub has been removed, meaning it must be finished? Not at all, as it even lacks the dialogue during Roggvir’s execution, and we have hundreds of similar articles. ALMOST finished, and certainly not stubs, but not up to UESP-standards. The only solution is to encourage people to FINISH the articles instead of just adding bits of information and, if they run into trouble, make a note on the talk page or ask a patroller or administrator. --Krusty (talk) 21:25, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

Understood. Adding the stub tag back to Aldis's page now. DG^{Any Questions?} 21:33, 31 October 2013 (GMT)

Bot Maintenance Schedule

I don't know if anyone actually cares :), but for the last while, I've been running the bot's protection and templated links (e.g., links like {{DB|Apocrypha}}) tasks roughly once a month. For the past two months in a row, it has found nothing to do for either of them, so I'm going to bump it down to every other month for the time being. If there are a lot of archives or templated links created at some point, we can always bump it back up, or run it on-demand. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 03:28, 1 November 2013 (GMT)

Fake "New Messages" Policy Change

There was a brief discussion on Nocte Canticum's talk page prompted by this edit, where it was brought up that Wikipedia now has a policy (as of last year) against creating fake "new message" banners. This actually isn't the first time this subject has come up, as I removed the one on DUMG's user page four years ago, which led to this discussion, indicating we should leave them in place. I don't think that was ever written into policy, but since the new WP policy is a change from what we were doing, I wanted to bring it up here before we formally adopt the policy to remove them. Does anybody have any opinions on allowing or removing them? – Robin Hood ^(talk) 21:58, 4 November 2013 (GMT)

IMO, it's not a huge deal, but it is misleading, and it obviously causes consternation with some editors, so we should probably prohibit it. --Xyzzy ^Talk 22:01, 4 November 2013 (GMT)

I support this whole-heartedly. Jeancey (talk) 22:02, 4 November 2013 (GMT)

Same, disallow for deliberate misleading. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 22:03, 4 November 2013 (GMT)

Agreed. It seems juvenile and disruptive to me. --AN|L (talk) 22:04, 4 November 2013 (GMT)

I am in agreement with Robin. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 22:05, 4 November 2013 (GMT)

Xyzzy took the words right out of my mouth. ThuumofReason (talk) 23:32, 4 November 2013 (GMT)

Yea. —Legoless (talk) 23:35, 4 November 2013 (GMT)

Yay. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 23:47, 4 November 2013 (GMT)

Agreed. --Krusty (talk) 23:53, 4 November 2013 (GMT)

(←) I didn't realise it was disruptive for so many users. Sorry guys; I wouldn't have done it had I known. I support this policy change as well. --Nocte|Chat|Look 02:05, 5 November 2013 (GMT)

You don't need to apologize Nocte, it was an honest mistake. Honestly, I think it's kind of funny, but at the same time, it can also be pretty confusing and it probably gets old fast, so it might be better to disallow it. ThuumofReason (talk) 02:22, 5 November 2013 (GMT)

Okay, in light of the unanimous support, I'll remove the two that I found on the wiki. I don't particularly see a need to document this in our policies, since we default to Wikipedia's anyway. Please say so if you feel we should. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 08:24, 6 November 2013 (GMT)

Repeated/Redundant Links

Hello everybody! Lately, numerous editors has been busy removing so-called “repeated/redundant links” from articles, probably based on what the style guide dictates – but I want to make perfectly clear that repeated links can be more than useful, not only to break up walls of text (which is a very good reason), but especially to ensure easier navigation for our users. There is no point in having in-depth articles, if users have to scroll back to wherever-the-link-is to move on to the next article. So please – try and think as a user (and take a look at the layout) before removing a link. --Krusty (talk) 17:35, 6 November 2013 (GMT)

Yes, I do agree with you. Having more links in articles - even if they are the same link - can be useful for your reasons given.

We will see what other users think though - some users don't like redundant links in articles. DG^{Any Questions?} 18:26, 6 November 2013 (GMT)

Everyone should keep in mind that we are trying to avoid cluttering links rather than prohibiting repeated links in an article. We should almost never link the same page in the same section of an article unless that section is incredibly long, and in that case we should probably split the section up rather than repeat links. As Krusty said, it's all about user convenience, which should always be one of our highest considerations. --Xyzzy ^Talk 20:56, 6 November 2013 (GMT)

I usually remove repeated links in articles, and that's what I have been practising because of edits such as this and this; repeated links were removed even though they were on completely different sections. I have also seen many other users removing repeated links on the same sections on various articles.

Krusty, I'm guessing you brought this up after my edit here after your Vittoria revamp. Well, I was only removing repeated links from the same section. Anyway, from my observation of other users, normal practice is to remove repeated links, and I believe that is the implied consensus which has been followed by editors over the years.

According to the guidelines, "You should avoid creating duplicate links in an article. A link can be repeated if it last appeared in a previous section (since many readers will not read all sections of a page), but there is hardly ever a reason to link to the same article more than once in the same section." ~ Psylocke 00:51, 7 November 2013 (GMT)

I think this is more a reminder to avoid removing redundant links in other sections of the article than anything else. You have the policy right, Psylocke, but some users might not immediately understand that the point is to avoid cluttering links, as Xyzzy said. This notice is mostly just to make sure that everyone understands the distinction between avoiding cluttering links and removing links haphazardly. ThuumofReason (talk) 13:57, 7 November 2013 (GMT)

Android/iOS application (Moved from AN)

Just inquiring as to whether an android and/or iOS application for the UESP is currently being made or if one isn't that someone experienced in coding could begin making one? — Unsigned comment by 101.168.42.148 (talk) at 06:14 on 9 November 2013

Don't believe so, but UESP has a mobile site at mobile.uesp.net, which should work fine with your phone's browser. —Legoless (talk) 15:18, 9 November 2013 (GMT)

I seem to remember Jak saying that the mobile site isn't all that great, but we would definitely just improve the mobile site rather than make an app. There just isn't really anything you can do in an app that you couldn't do on a mobile site. Jeancey (talk) 21:16, 9 November 2013 (GMT)

Some people just prefer having an application. I understand why, mobile device browsers aren't ever that precise, it seems. I wouldn't be apposed to us having one, were someone interested in making it. But this project would really need that person who was interested in it. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 22:07, 9 November 2013 (GMT)

The mobile site works pretty nicely. Only issue is the usual cache problems, which makes it less than ideal for dealing with recent edits. —Legoless (talk) 22:21, 9 November 2013 (GMT)

I find that the mobile version of the wiki works decently on my Android, better than most wikis, although I think it could use some work with images. They tend to throw off the text of the page if they are too large. The main page is often a victim of this and tends to get very squished. An autodetect feature (to detect being on a mobile device) would be a nice option, too. It's what the forums have, albeit with an option to switch to the desktop version, of course. These are minor details, but you know! Two s'witty cents for ya. :) --Avron the S'wit (talk) 03:14, 10 November 2013 (GMT)

How to contact forum admin w/out working forum account?

How do I contact a forum admin to reactivate my forum account? I suspect the problem is that the email address used for my original registration is no longer valid, which seems to make it impossible to access my account.

- When I try to login to forums, it says "The specified username is currently inactive. If you have problems activating your account, please contact a board administrator."

- If I try to recover password or resend activation email, it says "The e-mail/username information submitted could not be found."

- If I try to register that e-mail/username (the same one I'm using for the WIKI), it says "The username you entered is already in use, please select an alternative."

--Bheimbaugh (talk) 02:54, 12 November 2013 (GMT)

I believe the information you need is in this post here. :) Jeancey (talk) 03:00, 12 November 2013 (GMT)

Of the options listed on that page, I think the only one you can use without an account is to post to Avron's talk page here, but I just sent her a private e-mail directing her to this discussion. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 03:19, 12 November 2013 (GMT)

The easiest way to contact a forum admin is to email us at forums@uesp.net. That should be the address that is linked to at the login error page. You can also post to my talk page. Shoot me an email, though, and I'll get everything straightened out for you! -- Musicman247 ^(talk) 03:31, 12 November 2013 (GMT)

Hi! As Musicman said, you can e-mail us. I actually reset your account and it should you send you an email to reactivate it. Feel free to e-mail us if you have any problems! --Avron the S'wit (talk) 03:35, 12 November 2013 (GMT)

Oh, and to add as a super friendly reminder in case forum questions pop up before Musicman247 (or I) are alerted to them: remember to visit the forums wiki page for some help and who to contact, particularly the Helpful Information section. Feel free to share that page with others, as well as the forums' e-mail address! Musicman answers all questions ungodly fast, and I am also available as well. --Avron the S'wit (talk) 18:29, 12 November 2013 (GMT)

UESP Community Interviews

Hello everyone! Avron again here. I want to invite everyone to enjoy 15 minutes of fame on the UESP's social media pages on a special segment on the community and its members! To do so, I have created a member interview form. (Also, please tell me if this link works. It works fine for everyone, but not on the wiki preview, for whatever reason.) All you have to do is answer the questions and hit submit, and - presto! Your responses are saved for us to use so we can share it with everyone! I'd like to feature one member every two months - or more frequently, depending on how many responses are received.

This is a great opportunity to tell people more about what you do on UESP, what your area is, and, above all, to reach out to others both in our community as active editors, patrollers, moderators, admins, etc. and with those who enjoy the wonderful content you supply. The SMPs frequently get messages from people thanking UESP for the years of being the top TES source on the web, so, please, feel free to interact with those who are enjoying the fruits of your labor! Without your hard work, the site would hardly be as great as it is. (And poor Dave would probably have his hands quite full!)

Naturally, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about the SMPs, getting involved, or what questions to ask, feel free to contact me. I hope you will get involved! --Avron the S'wit (talk) 03:29, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

Done! :) Jeancey (talk) 14:59, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

I did one too. --Nocte|Chat|Look 15:46, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

This be Skyrimplayer here. He done filled it out. --Skyrimplayer (talk) 15:48, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

You guys are the best! Remember, there's no time limit on this, and it will remain open for as long as we're doing the SMPs. Feel free to contribute your own answers whenever you can! :) --Avron the S'wit (talk) 16:35, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

(←) I have ompleted the form as well :) -damon ^xoxo 17:15, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

Great idea! I may have answered some of these questions myself in past interviews but I'll fill it out shortly as well. -- Daveh ^(talk) 17:49, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

I have done it as well. --AN|L (talk) 18:35, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

Just adding this so I know I already filled out a form. Hi everyone. :) --_¿Vulpa^? 03:31, 1 December 2013 (GMT)

Trivia on Lore pages?

I was wondering if it would be acceptable to put trivia in the lore pages. For example, Breton. The Breton people are heavily based off of the Breton ethnic group is very much real, they are largely found in Northern France. Of course there's the Brittonic language but the naming conventions of the Breton are quite similar to French naming conventions. Another example could be the Nord people who are heavily based on well the Nords or Norse.

Should I add this? To be quite honest, I don't really think it's necessary I just have this compulsion to fill articles with all the information I possibly can. ChildofKyne (talk) 20:32, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

Trivia is typically disallowed, though anything can change with consensus. Personally, I am against the inclusion of trivia, because even relevant ones would open the floodgate to whatever anyone can think of, relevant or irrelevant. -damon ^xoxo 20:35, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

Such trivia isn't desired in lore (evidenced by the many discussions on removing such instances), it is mostly conjecture and honestly irrelevant. Despite this we know that the races are broadly based off a group of people in Earth's history (Nords > Vikings, Imperials > Romans). Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 20:39, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

That's what I was worried about. I had issues with people putting their own thoughts "just cuz". Hence why I asked. But perhaps we can find a sort of compromise? Perhaps a separate page could be in order? I have an issue with placing real world information in lore articles. ChildofKyne (talk) 20:44, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

I have to agree with Silencer that this kind of information doesn't really need to be documented, and the issues Damon described would apply even if we did create a separate page. If we include trivia, it would only raise a bunch of verifiability concerns, so it would really be more trouble than it's worth. ThuumofReason (talk) 22:06, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

"The orange and black butterflies may be based off of Monarch butterflies, Queen butterflies, Soldier butterflies, or the mimic Viceroy butterflies." "Salmon and these other fish exist in the real world, but x species does not." "Sabre cats existed x million years ago, but had y differences." "Mammoths would have been larger and more confined to x climates." Some of it is common sense and some of it is just interesting facts, but all of these examples would follow the "trivia" tag. But we are not a real-world encyclopedia; none of this information directly relates to the game, and while interesting, it's essentially useless in context of the games. The only trivia-like info we currently have anywhere is Easter Eggs and very, very obvious etymologies (like Vilkas, Farkas, and Stalhrim), and I think we should stick to that. It keeps such added info at a minimum and directly relevant. Vely^►t►e 23:40, 19 November 2013 (GMT)

I think it would quickly get out of hand. Any particularly scintillating bits of trivia should just find their way to the "Did you know?" page. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 00:51, 20 November 2013 (GMT)

(←) Totally agree with the sentiments stated here. Very, VERY, VERY little trivia should be included in any article, and even less (if that's possible) should be listed in a Lore article. --Xyzzy ^Talk 05:19, 20 November 2013 (GMT)

Wiki Markup

Just a follow-up on the small request I made here long ago. Browsing through the recent changes now, I think now is a good time to add [[Online:|]]. ~ Psylocke 17:32, 21 November 2013 (GMT)

I wouldn't object to it, but last night was due to a massive dump of information by Zenimax onto their website. I don't anticipate a massive amount of extra work happening just yet, though we will be working on creating pages to best convey this latest information. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 18:42, 21 November 2013 (GMT)

I don't see any harm in doing this. It's done! --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 19:40, 21 November 2013 (GMT)

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